The Racket

A generation ago in Australia, abortion was a crime. It was also the basis of one of the country's most lucrative and longest-lasting criminal rackets. The Racket describes the rise and fall of an extraordinary web of influence, which culminated in the landmark ruling that made abortion legal, and a public inquiry that humiliated a powerful government and a glamorous police force. With forensic skill and psychological subtlety, Gideon Haigh brings to life a story of corruption in high places and human suffering in low, of murder, suicide, courtroom drama, political machinations, and of the abortionists themselves: among them a multi-millionaire philanthropist, a communist bush poet, a timid aesthete and a bankrupt slaughterman. It is the story, too, of Bertram Wainer, abortion's crash-through-or-crash campaigner, and the moral issue he bequeathed which still divides Australians.

About the Author

Gideon Haigh is the author of Game For Anything: Writings on cricket, The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket, Mystery Spinner: The story of Jack Iverson, and The Border Years, and has edited Wisden's Cricketers' Almanack Australia. He covered the 2005 Ashes series for The Guardian newspaper in the UK. His other books include the award-winning Asbestos House, and Bad Company.